


Heart and Soul

by Mad_Maudlin



Category: SGA - Fandom
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-23
Updated: 2010-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-06 15:03:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mad_Maudlin/pseuds/Mad_Maudlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You think there's something going on with McKay?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heart and Soul

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tielan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/gifts).



> For Tielan as SGA Santa Pinch Hitter #5 (she requested Rodney+Teyla about music) and my mom (even though she'll never read it), who played for me.

It was John who first noticed it, but he brought it up reluctantly, as was his nature. "You think there's something going on with McKay?" was how he worded it, but Teyla could see in his eyes he was worried.

"Something's always going on with McKay," Ronon pointed out.

"I mean something weird," John said. He poked listlessly at his salad. "He keeps canceling on me and saying he's got other plans. It's lunch time and he's not stuffing his face and complaining about the new technicians."

"Could he be with Jennifer?" Teyla asked.

John shook his head. "No, he always says if it's a Jennifer thing." He shook his head. "Never mind. Probably imagining things."

Ronon, perhaps to console John, said, "He is acting kinda twitchy," but that just caused John to make a face, as if he suspected he was being patronized for this moment of weakness.

Teyla knew what it had cost him to even speak up, and so she said, "I will keep my eyes open," she promised.

"Thanks," John said, obviously grateful, and Teyla smiled at him.

-\\-\\-\\-

She only really became concerned, though, when Jennifer brought it up independently. They had agreed it was wise to have Torren vaccinated against some common Earth illnesses, as he spent so much time in the city, and while Teyla soothed away his tears Jennifer asked quietly, "This is gonna sound kind of crazy, but have you seen much of Rodney lately?"

"No less than usual," Teyla said. "Though I was on New Athos all of yesterday."

Jennifer nodded. "Right. Of course. It's just...I'm probably being a little paranoid."

"Over what?"

She dropped the empty syringes in the red container and sat down. "We were talking the other day, and I think maybe I hurt his feelings...I mean, you know how self-conscious he can get about dumb stuff, right? And I don't even remember what brought it up, but all of a sudden he was talking about whether it's possible for people to change and all this weird self-help stuff, and then he left real quick and since then he's bailed on plans we had together at least three times and I....am rambling at you, sorry."

Teyla shifted Torren's weight to her other knee. "Could he be spending time with John?"

Jennifer shook her head. "He always says if it's a John thing. I just...you don't think I upset him?"

"I will speak to him," Teyla said. "Knowing Rodney, he may not even realize he has worried you."

"Yeah," Jennifer said, eyes losing their focus for a moment. "It said 'nerd' on the box when I bought it, after all."

-\\-\\-\\-

So when she happened to catch Rodney walking briskly down a corridor—down a corridor that lead to no labs, no personnel quarters, no facilities—Teyla turned briefly back to the gym and left her bag in one of the lockers there. Then she removed her shoes. As quietly as if she was stalking a mrath, she rushed after him, counting on his single-minded focus to conceal her as much as her own stealth.

Rodney might've disappeared entirely if he had taken a transporter, but as it was he went into a wing of rooms where Teyla knew the transporters were offline. She watched him enter one particular room and waited outside for a moment, thinking carefully. If Rodney were at work on some private project, he might resent the intrusion; yet she could think of nothing stored in this area that he might wish to work on. And simple privacy did not seem his style, either. Rodney was a performer, and as much as he complained about his colleagues he enjoyed playing off their ideas and arguing with them. It was what made his collaborations with Radek and Colonel Carter so effective. Yet what else, besides his work, would he have reason to hide?

That was when she heard the music.

It began with simple scales, in keys that had become familiar to her after many years of hearing the Lanteans' music; rising and falling, fast and slow, only semi-audible down the corridor. There was no question it came from the same room Rodney had entered. Teyla stepped closer to listen; she did not quite recognize the instrument, though it had some of the same qualities as a harp or hand chime. Perhaps it was something built by the Ancestors?

The scales stopped abruptly, and Teyla prepared herself to hear Rodney talking to himself, as he so often did while at work. Instead, she heard only a few muffled and indistinct noises, and then a proper song began to play on the same instrument as before. Teyla shut her eyes and listened.

-\\-\\-\\-\\-

The problem with living among the Lanteans—well, one of many—was getting a hand on their culture, because they did not have just one. Their homeworld carried billions of people and a galaxy's worth of languages and beliefs and habits. Elizabeth had explained early on that many of them came from a few fairly similar lands—"Western," she called it, though west of whom Teyla had never been certain—but even so, it meant there were no simple answers to even the simplest of questions.

Teyla had been exposed to music called Country, Punk, Pop, Euro-pop, J-pop, Disco, Classical, Baroque, Rococo, Romantic, Big Band, Jazz, Swing, Rock, Rap, Folk, Metal, Emo and simply Alternative. (Alternate to what? No one ever explained.) She had heard traditional songs of a dozen peoples in languages that the technology of the Ancesters did not translate. Everyone had an opinion about music, and they usually contradicted each other, and if she had asked she could've had a year's worth of recordings at her fingertips and little idea where to begin listening.

So she did not recognize the song that came through Rodney's door, though it sounded familiar, one of the thousands of Lantean songs she had heard more than once but never really learned. It began with a steady, mournful theme in a minor key, high sweet notes that swept down over a rhythmic, rippling baseline. The hypnotic melody was suddenly broken with a crash of jubilant chords, and the piece changed completely, becoming airy and cheerful, bounding along at an astonishing speed—until it suddenly slowed, and the mourning tread returned, even slower and more methodical.

Then it changed again, and Teyla found herself holding her breath against the thunder of low chords rising up out of the base. It was just as fast as before, but dissonant, with a melody line as shrill as screaming. Her heart sped up just listening to it, until it suddenly flew apart with a few choppy chords, collapsed into nothing but an ever-ascending headlong rush, the melody climbing higher and higher with furious speed...

...until it plummeted, staggered, a few notes left in shivering suspension. And the mournful main theme returned for a final line, the steady bass line now a heavy plod, the sweet melody thin and weak compared to the tumult that had preceded it. It finally wound down to a final, exhausted chord, and Teyla remembered to release her breath, and let her head fall to rest against the closed doors.

The thump was so small that she scarcely noticed it. But, surprisingly, after a short moment Rodney called warily, "Is somebody out there?"

Teyla climbed to her feet but hesitated for a moment, and in that moment Rodney opened the doors. His face was very red, though she could not say whether it was from exertion or embarrassment. He looked nervous, until he saw her; then he looked terrified. "Oh. Teyla. Um. Hi?"

She began to say, "That music was very--"

"I know," Rodney said, flinching, "I know, the tempo was all over the place and I completely screwed up the second section and this thing doesn't actually have a pedal, I just," one hand flailed in space. "I'm kind of out of practice so please don't say anything."

"I was going to say I found it very moving," Teyla said.

Rodney's eyes bulged now. "Really?"

She craned her neck over his shoulder and saw the room beyond was small, smaller than most of the personnel quarters; a sort of keyboard was mounted on one wall, with long, narrow keys of translucent blue-silver crystal, though some of these were marked with small pieces of tape. She saw no obvious place where the sound should emerge. "May I ask what this device is?"

Rodney stepped aside, scratching the back of his neck in a gesture he must've unconsciously picked up from John. "Oh, well, I don't know the Ancient name because we all just called it the space piano," he said quickly. "Even the cultural anthropologists got bored of it years ago, so I just...just thought I'd, um..."

Teyla examined the keyboard. The small pieces of tape had letters written on them, some of them accompanied by symbols. Rodney had hung a few pieces of paper to the wall above the keyboard, though Teyla had never before seen the diagrams—she supposed they must be diagrams—drawn there. The title, however, was clear Lantean text. "Fur Elise," she read aloud.

"Elis-eh," Rodney said. "It's actually called the Bagatelle in A Minor for Solo Piano, but everybody knows it by the other name." He seemed unable to look at her properly. "I used to know how to play it by memory, but, you know, thirty years ago and all..."

Teyla looked at his nervous fidgeting. "What happened thirty years ago?" she asked.

"I stopped playing," he said. "Just...it's kind of a long story."

A very long one, she decided, judging by the set of his mouth, but she did not press for it. "And why have you decided to begin again?"

Rodney sighed and sat down on the low bench in front of the keyboard, bracing his elbows on knees. After a moment of staring into a corner of the room, he said, "It's something Jennifer said."

Teyla sat next to him, though the bench was not long. "She is concerned that she may have upset you."

He shook his head. "No, no, not that kind of saying. Just, she said something and...you know what, actually, it's your fault."

"My fault?" Teyla echoed.

He waved a hand madly about. "Everyone's fault. Atlantis's fault. I never cared about being an asshole before I came here and people started _liking_ me and _dying_ for me and stuff." He sighed. "I know I'm not, well, not always so easy to live with. And I'm working on that. I am."

"And so you began to play music again?"

He looked over his shoulder at the diagrams on the wall. "Jennifer said something, I don't even remember what we were talking about, but she said...she basically said it's good to do something you're not good at sometimes." He snorted and looked back at his hands. "Which I admit is not something I'm good at, so I suppose I get bonus points just for trying."

"I thought you played very well," Teyla said.

He shook his head. "I...let's just say I'm not good _enough._ And thirty years out of practice. You know I used to play this piece blindfolded?"

Teyla looked at the diagrams on the wall again. "And now you must..follow these instructions?"

Rodney followed her eyes and blinked. "Oh! Oh, well, duh, of course you don't read sheet music. Yeah, this is sort of...well, it's meant for Earth instruments, but the Ancients used basically the same scale, or else this wouldn't even work." He twisted on the bench and pulled down one of the sheets. "See, the staff, the lines here, it represents the scale, and the notes—the little circles—they're, uh, they're notes. Wow, I'm bad at explaining this."

"I understand," Teyla said quickly. "It is a system for recording music by hand."

"Exactly!" Rodney said brightly. "So, you see here, here's where the song starts, these are sixteenth notes—so it's one-sixteenth of an actual beat, which actually doesn't make a lot of sense now that I think about it—and it goes E," He struck a key on the keyboard, producing one of those sweet high notes, "D-sharp, E, D-sharp, E...you see?"

That did not explain even a fraction of the symbols on the page, but at least Teyla now had the idea of how this could be read, with enough practice. "Did you bring this text with you?" she asked.

"Oh, god, no," he said. "I haven't touched a piano in years, I told you. I found most of this stuff, either on the servers or in the old book drop..." He pulled a small plastic folder out from under the bench and began to show it to Teyla: it was more of the same dense gridding, but with different patterns, different titles. "Which means it's a mix of classical and popular crap and Christmas carols and whatever, but some of it, uh, some of it's actually okay. And either way, it makes good practice."

Teyla turned over some of the pieces, careful not to rearrange their order. _Claire de Lune, Piano Man, Rage Over a Lost Penny, The Entertainer, Theme from Schindler's List, Moonlight Sonata, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, Camptown Races, Heart and Soul, Brick..._ The titles meant nothing to her, of course, but there seemed to be a wealth of music here. She had never heard Rodney do more than hum tunelessly as he worked, or nod along to whatever music he was listening to. "Do you intend to learn all these pieces?" she asked.

Rodney shrugged. "Right now I'd be happy if I can get Fur Elise to sound right, so no, probably not." He smiled weakly, but looked back at his hands. "It's not like I have a deadline or something, right?"

Teyla passed him back the folder. "Do you intend to tell anyone else?"

"Of course not," Rodney blurted. "Are you kidding?"

Teyla had rarely seen Rodney so upset and uncertain of himself, and wondered what the actual purpose of this project was. She could see little benefit in laboring to perfect music no one would ever hear; as a method of teaching humility, it was ill-suited to Rodney's temperament. "John and Jennifer are both aware that something is amiss with you," she said. "Sooner or later they will follow you as I did."

He frowned. "So maybe I didn't think this all the way through."

"I would not say that, exactly," Teyla said.

"No, no." He looked at the folder and scowled. "And I'm not even a 'fine technical player' anymore, so there's not really much of a point in keeping up this...whatever it is."

"I did enjoy your playing, though," she said, hoping to lift his gloomy mood somewhat.

Rodney blinked, and then looked at the keyboard again as if seeing it for the first time. "Yeah," he said softly, with wonder in his eyes. "Huh. So did I."

Teyla waited for him to expand on what was clearly a revelation, and when he did not she ventured, "Then by all means continue playing. But please do not continue hiding."

He turned around to face the keyboard, studying it, and after a moment he reached out and picked out a few syncopated notes, the last of which seemed to be flat. "Well," he said after a minute. "I mean, it's not like Sheppard doesn't inflict his awful guitar on us at every opportunity."

"This is true," Teyla said, though she privately thought John's guitar playing was much better than his singing, which he was also liable to try on short notice.

"It's just," Rodney said, "it is kind of a long story."

And Teyla could've asked for it, and Rodney probably would've told her. But rather than distress him further, she took his hand, the one that still hovered over the keyboard. "Then perhaps you could teach me to read this music code," she said.

He blinked at her. "Are you joking?"

"My people have no such way of recording songs," she said. "It would be a useful way to preserve some of our traditions."

Now he frowned. "You're totally joking, aren't you?"

"Rodney," she said, reaching over to place his other hand on the keyboard. "Please. Play for me."

"Oh, no no no." He reached into the folder and rifled through the pages again. "No way am I doing all the work on this one. Here." He pulled out another piece of music, a single page, and taped it to the wall with a large black X at the top. _"Heart and Soul._ Now, the names of the notes are just the letters A through G, and I'll explain sharps and flats later, but the five lines of the staff are E, G, B, D, and F..."


End file.
